Hawker 1 - Florida Firefight



Hawker: Florida Firefight

Carl Ramm
1984 Dell Publishing

"Demanding justice, he was a one-man SWAT team in a daring raid on an island of death"

"A walking arsenal skilled in every lethal art, he lived outside the law - to battle the forces no law could touch"

"James Hawker was Chicago's most decorated cop...until he gunned down a ruthless terrorist instead of serving him a summons.  That "mistake" cost Hawker his badge and turned him overnight into what some men called America's deadliest vigilante.

Hawker - a man tough as gristle.  Armed with the technology of the electronic age and a white-hate rage for justice, he was a hunter stalking the modern jungle, uncompromising, fearless, determined to turn its predators into his prey."

Hawker is a Chicago police sniper who gets suspended for vague political reasons because he shot a Honduran during a hostage situation after he opened fire on a group of rich teenagers.  He gets a two week suspension, which causes him to quit in a cliched scene Dell Publishing is for some reason so proud of they included it in the preface.

"Hawker, Captain Cheznik says I should be giving you another medal instead of suspending you.  But I don't have much choice.  You didn't play by our rules, so you left all of us wide open to criticism from every bleeding-heart politician and liberal who wants to be quoted in the press."

Hawker is contacted by the Buddhist Texas millionaire father of a boy that was killed, and offers to fund him in a one-man right-wing vigilante death squad.

Hawker is a high-tech vigilante, and has a top of the line 128 K computer, along with a set of discs a hacker gave him that will let him hack into any computer connected to a phone line.

His first assignment is to investigate a small Florida town that is overrun by Colombians.  Of course they're drug dealers, don't even worry about it.  Hawker doesn't, as he murders men in cold blood for the crime of guarding stuff as he inspires the non-Colombian Floridians to raise arms.

There's some non-PC humor attempts when AIDS jokes were acceptable ("I think you have a candidate for AIDS disease here."), but the plot is too cliched and the action too flat.  The few action scenes are practically written out as "He opens the door and shoots the gun and the bad guys fall down dead."  And the final showdown has the line: "It seems I have underestimated you, Mr. James Thornton Hawker," he hissed. "But I assure you it be will be the very last time" with no irony or embarrassment.

The sample pages of the next installment are more fruitful than the entire first book, but this one was too dull to give this series a second read.